SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be removed from office in a lawsuit filed by authors including comedian Sarah Silverman accusing the company of copyright infringement to train its employees. artificial intelligence technology.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Hixson on Tuesday rejected Meta’s request to block Zuckerberg’s deposition, saying there is enough evidence to show he is the “primary decision maker” of the company’s AI platforms. ‘business.
Meta had argued that Zuckerberg did not have unique knowledge of the company’s AI operations and that the same information could be obtained from depositions of other employees.
The authors “submitted evidence of his specific involvement in the company’s AI initiatives,” as well as his “direct oversight of Meta’s AI products,” Hixson wrote in a ruling issued Tuesday.
The class action lawsuit was filed last year in California federal court. The authors accuse Meta of illegally downloading digital copies of their books and using them – without consent or compensation – to train its AI platforms.
Also this week, prominent attorney David Boies joined the case on behalf of Silverman and the group of other plaintiffs that includes the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
Boies is best known for representing Al Gore in the disputed 2000 election against George W. Bush.
The case against Meta is part of a series of similar lawsuits filed in San Francisco and New York against other AI chatbot developers, including Anthropic, Microsoft And ChatGPT manufacturer OpenAI.